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Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005 / 7:49 p.m. ~Weary, Wary, Receptive in Optimism~ Quite suddenly I'm weary, and I suppose it's all the speculating, political and personal, or maybe just spending a tremendous amount of energy being... energetic. I went to Publix after work, first time in a very little while, and as usual there was a woman there cooking, serving up samples. She is there most week nights, and tonight I told her, via another fan, "She is an excellent cook!", to much head nodding and muffled verbal agreement, mouths working overtime eating the Italian beef 'sandwiches' and roasted potatoes with herbs, and the salad with the plum tomoates and apples, Craisins, Italian dressing. I wanted a large plate full, and a table, and a bottle of vino, and I wanted us all to sit together, and for our cook to remove her hairnet and join us, tell us her stories. Instead, I bought a ready-made spinach salad, with radishes, yellow, red and green bell peppers, mushrooms, carrots, and poured a shiitake ginger dressing over the top, and watched the news with Norman, at home, and thought about war, and bloodshed, and the madman at the helm, like Humphrey Bogart in "Mutiny on the Bounty", rolling those steel balls incessantly around in his palm, between his fingers. Mad. And when will we have our mutiny? Personally, we've been told there is more 'news' at work, and we all cling to hope, each with her own hope, layoffs, new jobs, resume writing seminar tomorrow, what will it be? Unemployment checks? New job at corporate offices? New job elsewhere? So many women, so many of us older than we'd like, settled there, years, all of us, years, and wondering where do we go, what do we do. I talked to one, quite spontaneously, and we encouraged one another. You like animals, I said, go work with animals! I'm thinking of a writing job, or something creative, in the broad field of entertainment media. Go for it, she said! Planned Parenthood, I say, or something political, human rights, animal rights, endangered species, World Wildlife Fund, I want to help, do something important, or something creative. Do it, she says! She says she's afraid to be exposed to the horror stories inherent in working to save animals, she can't do it, her empathic heart will not abide her wishes, and I furrow my brow, wrinkle my nose, tell her I don't know what to say, and we both dream of a layoff, time to think, regroup, money to 'hold us over'. Then I stop and think of all the possibilities, and because there are far too many I stop myself. I'm confused and unsure, and I decide to 'fiddle dee dee', think about that tomorrow! (cheap "Gone With the Wind" reference there, tell me you know it?) Two notices at my door, identical, one signed, one not, one after the phone call I place to tell management here at the apartments that I KNOW when my lease is up, and what's with all the damned exclamation points anyway? There is no IMMEDIATE need to renew, and leave me the hell alone! My 90-day notice, he says. There will be a 60-day as well. And then I get a second, a repeat of the first. I tell him I have until the end of February to give my notice, if I choose, and he will know no sooner than then. There is a push, there is change just on the horizon in the workplace, there are meetings being taken by higher ups, and there are people we do not know, hovering, taking notes, and there is so much that is unsettling that when we look each other in the eye it is with a knowing compassion, and a warm embrace in our hearts. We are one and the same, and we all cling to this. Waiting. I find fun, I am enjoying this and that, and a writing relationship, a certain cerebral connection new and entertaining, and I am allowing myself to become more aware of the world, and what we face now, what we are up against, and I communicate now, I have reconnected with friends, and we write, we talk, we make plans. And when it's not them, it is me. I, alone, find ways to live, to enjoy what brings me pleasure, to assure that there is pleasure, that it is not all encompassing uncertainty. The potential is there, to sink, again, but that feels so long ago that I did that, and I floated to the surface, or more likely sprang quickly, but not too fast, no sickness there, nothing unusual, just an innate desire not to sink so low, and to keep living, to see what comes, of all of this. I remain optimistic, in spite of myself, and in spite of all that there is, now. In a way, for all of it, it is tremendously exciting, and I believe in karma, and I believe we will all get what is our due. I would like to think I've paid my penance, I've made my amends, and I am ready for something truly wonderful. I rely on outside sources far beyond my comprehension to make it happen, but I am receptive to it all. Cost of the War in Iraq
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